A Mad World, My Masters

by Thomas Middleton

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Genres: Plays, 17th Century, Classics, Drama, Comedy, Theatre, British Literature

100 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1605

About the author

Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy. Also a prolific writer of masques and pageants, he remains one of the most noteworthy and distinctive of Jacobean dramatists.

Reviews

[Cam david · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une autre journée, une autre pièce de la fin du moyen âge / début de la renaissance! J’aimerai vraiment en trouver d’autre, mais ils sont si durs à trouver! Ce ne fut pas ma pièce préférée, mais comme tous les autres, elle avait le charme de l’époque qui la rendait plaisante à lire. J’ai eu la chance de trouver la version bilingue, j’avais donc le texte original, dure à lire, et sa traduction plus accessible à côté. J’ai aimé pouvoir avoir accès à l’écriture de l’auteur, au nom originaux, mais également à un texte que je pouvais comprendre facilement.

Un de mes problèmes principal avec cette pièce, était que les personnages étaient tous plutôt détestable. Mise à part Sir Bountenous qui était un personnage plutôt divertissant et amusant les autres était plutôt énervant. Il était pour sa part quelque peu caricatural, un peu farfelue, mais en gardant quand même une sorte de douceur et d’humanité. J’ai d’ailleurs aimé l’intrigue qu’il y avait entre lui et Follywit, qui était cependant détestable. C’était intéressant et dénonçait bien la nature avarice de l’humain. Il allait tout lège ; à son petit-fils à sa mort et il était au pied de la mort, son petit-fils n’aurait eu qu’à attendre un peu pour devenir super riche, mais il était trop pressé, il voulait tout, tout de suite et a décidé de se jouer de son grand-père. Dans sa fraude il a tout perdu.

Les noms choisis par l’auteur était hilarant, très visuelle, on comprenait directement un aspect de leur personnalité seulement par leur nom et leur présentation. On avait Sir Bounteous Progress, Richard Follywit, Master Shortrod Harebrain, Ancient Hoboy (mon préféré), Gunwater, la liste est longue... ça un peu rendu ma lecture compliquer au début, mais je me suis rapidement habitué et après j’ai aimé ce côté humoristique et différent de leur manière de s’identifier. Comme je l’ai lu dans les deux langues j’ai eu accès aussi à la traduction des non à Lecervelé, Lhéritiher… et j’ai aussi aimé la version en français. J’ai bien aimé pourvoir voir les noms originaux et les comparé.

Par contre, au niveau du personnage de Harebrain, j’ai trouvé qu’elle avait un potentielle immense qui fut mal exploité. J’ai eu l’impression qu’elle jouait sa pièce indépendamment des autres personnages et que sa partie aurait pu être couper sans que cela n’affect réellement les autres personnages. Je m’attendais à se que son intrigue recoupe vraiment plus celle de Follywit et qu’elle ait un réel impact sur la fin, mais elle ne fit qu’acte de présence dans l’acte finale. Elle aurait facilement pu être mon personnage préféré, j’aimais son ambition et sa manière de savoir exactement ce qu’elle voulait, mais j’ai l’impression que son personnage à été trop négliger pour donner l’impact nécessaire. Elle aurait dû être celle qui vole le grand-père à la fin ou révèle être sa maitresse créant un scandale.

Il y avait quelques éclaires de personnalité intéressantes chez les personnages, mais je trouve qu’ils ont tous rapidement été avorté et pas mis à terme. On ne donne pas de réels détails sur eux ou les liens qu’ils entretiennent entre eux et à l’air Shakespearienne c’est un peu un choque face au travaille de se dramaturge. Je sentais cependant bien les échos à la Henri IV et j’ai apprécier cet air d’époque que la passionné d’histoire en moi recherche. En plus, si on en oublie ma critique sur les personnages, la trame narrative était intéressante et l’histoire plutôt plaisante, voir humoristique. C’était très fluide et je trouvais que malgré cette touche légèrement surréaliste de piéger le grand-père et de ligoter tout le monde tout le temps, on voyait bien une certaine critiques sociale sur la classe bourgeoise et sur la richesse et l’avarice. J’aime toujours critiquer les riches!

[Olívia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is Middleton allergic to writing likeable characters

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

PROS

-Sir Bounteous is a very fun character, almost like a Peter Sellers creation, in a way: a wacky caricature that still retains sweetness and humanity.

-Oh, what names! Sir Bounteous Progress, Richard Follywit, Master Shortrod Harebrain, Ancient Hoboy (my personal favorite), Gunwater, the list goes on and on...

-The Bounteous/Follywit plot in general is very strong. The image that closes II.i. (Sir Bounteous playing organ for his disguised, misguided grandson) is especially poignant.


CONS

-The Harebrain subplot is somewhat weak, and if it didn't finally intersect with the Follywit plot, I'd say the play could be performed successfully without it.

-There are some interesting flashes of personality in the dramatis personae, but (with the potential exception of Sir Bounteous) none with the fullness and detail of Shakespeare's characters. But I suppose holding all renaissance drama up to the standard of Shakespeare might be dangerous, huh?



I may have a few more observations (this play echoes Henry IV and Midsummer in nice ways) but I'll leave it at this for now.

[James Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this whilst having the RSC's performance, seen the night before, very much in mind. Whilst the two are by no means identical I did find this helped; I'm not sure I'd describe Middleton as easy to follow when read. Much of the amazing humour I derived from the performance in combination with the text (as drama should be), not the text in isolation.

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shakespeare isn't the only early modern English writer to concoct comic masterpieces. Middleton's play is another wonderful example of how good a comedy of that era can be.

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I preferred Chaste Maid in Cheapside's wittier tackling of similar themes. But I could easily imagine the plot of this one being adapted today into a film farce.

[Yorgos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent clay for a production. Not so good a text as A Trick, but better for the stage. The massive amount of obscenity is mostly sexual, though there's also a good amount of reference to puking, and I think the text is best made sense of in III.ii by having the courtesan pretend to suddenly need to defecate. The same scene has her monologuing and groaning in fake agony to cover up Mrs. Harebrain's moaning coming from the next room (or, for the adventurous director, from a curtained-off side of the stage) so that Mr. Harebrain (listening at the door) doesn't figure out what's going on. Hilarious! And the ironies the text establishes add to the humor, but, again, it's not all that much to just read the text: I'd like to hear it spoken aloud, alongside suspicious noises emanating from behind the stage, and see Harebrain straining to hear from behind a column or something.

The bawdy puns obviously are continuous, and usually obvious enough that Henning's declining to gloss them doesn't do much harm. ("The play revels in obscenity, double-entendres, and scatological jokes which I have scarcely ever felt obliged to explicate"). Other quirks of language include quoting Hamlet and a good amount of coinage metaphors, mostly unglossed in my edition but thoroughly explicated in Taylor et al.. Probably there's a good comparison to be made with Measure for Measure, another play which is obsessed with sex and coinage metaphors.

Peter Saccio, introducing the play in the Taylor edition, argues that the play invites us to judge Follywit on the merits of his intrigues, and not on objective standards. While I agree the play is only coherent if we do this, I think the invitation is actually done quite poorly. Until the second or third heist, I didn't much like Follywit. So that's a case where our real morality intrudes on the play's farce. On the other hand, Penitent Brothel's sudden and real repentance is a case where the play's real morality intrudes on the reader's enjoyment of that subplot's farce. In this I'm agreeing with Henning over Saccio, the latter of which I think must have been influenced by what he saw in David Rintoul's Penitent at the globe in 1998, who "made Penitent Brothel coherent by stressing the fanaticism with which he responded to the least impulse, whether he was playing doctor, sexually rampant, or bitterly repentant." I bet this would pretty much smooth it over on stage, and it has textual legs to stand on, but I don't think this is the authorial intention. The fundamental problem with the classic Middleton turn to virtue is that Middleton really means it. The turn to virtue is so sincere, so virtuous over-and-above the actions of a man who's only interested in the whims of the moment, and so measured, that I think this is just a hard problem in the book. You can work around it to have a more playable play, but if Middleton was directing you just know he'd play it straight.

Really fun tho. Some excellent theatrical set-pieces. Disguise, triple-robbery, quid-pro-quo, one often meets one's cuckolded destiny on the road one takes to avoid it. 4*, love Middleton.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Middleton is one of those writers who has specific styles: his "sex tragedies" are vicious, showing (like Webster or Ford) the very worst in men (and sometimes women). His comedies, on the other hand, are pieces of fluff. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and they bump along amusingly, getting lots of laughs with their extreme, venal and venereal characters.

A Mad World, My Masters is one of the latter: the scene where the husband is overhearing his wife cheating on him and thinks she's sobbing over her dying friend is a brilliant piece of comic conceit. The scenes where Follywit continues to gull his granddad are very amusing: basically, the man will do anything for a member of the peerage, including give him £200 just cause he asks for it.

And the central character of The Courtesan (Lady Frank Gullman) is a fabulous creation, with a commentary on the early-seventeenth century escort business from her mother: she is significantly the cleverest character on stage, and outwits everyone.

There is an interesting scene where the Pimp is haunted by the Devil in the form of his lover, and I have no idea if this is supposed to be serious or not. If not, I don't quite get the joke. If so, it's out of kilter with the rest of the play.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very funny City Comedy, with rather better plotting than many. Full of fairly unpleasant characters, to the point that you rather sympathise with the Courtesan when she manages to trick the young protagonist into marrying her - and she has some money and promises to be virtuous in future, so that's all good.

Absolutely splendid names, including Sir Penitent Brothel, Shortrod, Sir Bounteous Progress, Follywit and Harebrain. But typical Middleton in having a bunch of quite significant characters without any name at all other than their function.

Read as part of the REP online reading of the repertoire of the Jacobean Children's companies.

[Lucy Pearlman]

and the uni reading begins

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mad play, too.

[jules · Rating 2 out of 5]

so many of the women in these city comedies could be so fun, but my kingdom for an ounce of character depth or intense emotion.

[Lizardley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuinely pretty funny; maybe being a city comedy hater because of The Roaring Girl was not the way